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Brokerage is a business in which cold calling is an unappetizing but necessary course. Few calls have been colder than the dozens made last week to Goldie B. Wolfe, herself a premier cold caller in the commercial real estate industry.
Brazen brokers, alerted to her plans to incorporate, wondered if Ms. Wolfe needed help in finding office space.
"If I can't find space," she recalled, pausing as her staccato laughter approached its customary shriek, "no one can."
By her count, the effervescent Ms. Wolfe has spent the past 17 years lining up a billion dollars worth of office space for customers of Rubloff Inc., the big real estate firm where she emerged as the city's best-known broker.
Going off on her own had long seemed a natural. She had everything she needed -- contacts, wealth and moxie -- to pull it off. Only her secure status at Rubloff, as a star performer who could benefit from but not be burdened by its bureaucracy, held her back.
What finally pushed her was Rubloff itself. Under pressure to refocus its business mix and shift its compensation structure toward salaried personnel, the firm grew less hospitable for the likes of Goldie Wolfe, independent operators who saw their pay scales shrinking.
Four other brokers, plus a financial administrator, are leaving Rubloff to join her at Goldie B. Wolfe & Co., whose temporary quarters at Three First National Plaza are in a building that helped make her a leasing wonder.
"I gotta tell ya," she blurts uncontrollably. "I gotta great deal in one day."
By calling her own shots, Ms. Wolfe will get to keep a bigger piece of the commission pie. But she also will forgo a historic strength that she sold to prospective customers: Rubloff's deep research and administrative capabilities that freed her to deal.
"She has been going in and selling herself (by claiming), 'I am not a boutique.' Now, she's a boutique," observes Michael L. Silver, president of real estate consultant Equis Corp. and himself a former Rubloff broker.
Like most acquaintances, Mr. Silver...